Today, I dedicate this post to my high school Algebra teacher, Noel Martin, who still teaches my own children just down the middle school hallway, the last room on the right. Coach Martin is a fantastic Algebra teacher. I thanked God every day of calculus at Georgia Tech that I'd had Coach Martin to drill into me the fundamentals of Algebra. I still use Algebra all the time to solve problems. It is because I knew it cold with him.

Here's to all you math teachers out there. I hope you get some ideas you can use in your classroom today.

Engage NH has some examples of lessons that they consider exemplars for English Language arts grades 6-12 and math grades 1,2,7, and high school. IF you're looking to see what this looks like in practice, here are some that you'll want to review.

"In this activity, students will examine possible combinations (outcomes) by creating different outfits with shirts and pants. The students will then create a chart to record their data. This concrete to abstract activity will help students understand how to organize data in a useful manner to ease the process of interpretation." This is a neat grade 3-4 math lesson that teaches students how to analyze data. Could be adapted with other common things.

"A murder has been committed! There are 32 suspects; and one of them is guilty. Using your powers of deduction; can you crack each of the five coded clues to reveal the identity of the killer?" Cool idea.I may adapt this in my own classroom using technology.

A collection of more than 100 videos that help you explore the world of mathematics. Just about any math topic is covered including probabilities Kaprekar's Constant and more. These videos will be useful if you're in the process of working towards flipping your classroom.

Calling all math teachers - take a few minutes to evaluate your math textbook and get a $10 gift card for Amazon and start your summer reading early. http://bit.ly/KcfLbu (Full disclosure: I really like what this company Classroom Window is doing and how they want to aggregate teacher opinions into something that can make a difference and am in negotiations to have a (very small) stake in this company. As always I follow the blogger's code of ethics and my own and let you know if there is any other influence that you should be aware of. Also, however, note that I never work with anyone that I wouldn't recommend whether I was officially "working" with them or not.)

Mr. Nussbaum has a place value pirates game you can play to put math into your end of the year pirate theme. You could use the theme "Don't let summer steal your learning" and share games and fun things to do to learn over the summer.

For those who don't have a lot of technology, this type of lesson (tested in Nepal) that uses colored paper clips to introduce Algebra warms my heart. Algebra is an important subject and using simple manipulatives is a great technique for many classrooms around the world.

Can giants exist? This question for middle and high school has students use volume and surface area to determine if giants can exist. This is for geometry. Inquiry based projects can have great results.

Use the Xbox to help students with math. If this pilot works, this is attractive for many. "Thanks to a partnership with Microsoft, 12 HISD schools a received new X-Box 360 Kinect full gaming system and several video games for free as part of a national pilot program to enhance math curriculum and engage students in the classroom using innovative technology. Harris said the game system is helping students master math concepts quickly."

Pi day is this week. Have you planned for Pi day? Here are quite a few lesson plans including powerpoints and other activities. (Remember to have students bring real PIE or make one for them.) Make math fun and Pi day is a great way to do that!

Some great lessons to use for science and Engineering week (in the UK but why not bring it over the pond) March 9-18th. If you are promoting STEM here are some fun lessons including the squashed tomato challenge.

High school math teachers will love these sheets of word problems from the UK. They are attractive and well writtten. You can download and print them. I like how students have formulas on their sheets to help another student with their math problems. These are some of the most popular math resources from this site.

Website with tons of math and physics resources shared through a community. This site will give you the best physics and math multimedia on the web in one place. The partners are MIT OpenCourseware and Stony Brook University. This is another way to mashup content and how material is becoming more open

The Latin American Street Children's Organization has a math challenge that runs this Friday, February 3rd. Registration is open through January 31st. It is open to classrooms around the world. I find this interesting because the students debate the strategies for solving math problems. This is the largest math competition in Ireland but is spreading to other countries. When you participate, each child donates 1 british pound (convert to dollars for US) to participate. This looks like a fascinating competition and one that math teachers, particularly those who have students with Latin American heritage, may be excited to join.

Resources to teach students how to solve linear equations. If this is something that your students struggle with, look at these lesson plans and activities that you can download and use. Sometimes you need a different approach.

Smartots names their best educational apps. Here is why I like the concept of Smarttots - the apps give feedback to parents on what a child is actually learning. This is the topic of my New York Times piece last week: we don't have a feedback loop for the educational apps we're using so how do we know what they are doing. I think this is great. Their favorite app: SpaceMath followed by Animal Preschool games and 6 in 1 kids math.

If you want to see exactly how a LiveScribe pen works, this is an excellent tutorial video. It isn't super fast but it shows you how it really works from beginning to end. This demo is how to create a pencast. Although some of you may be doing this on your ipad using some of the new apps, the Livescribe pen is a sub $100 pen that is very powerful. If you prefer to take notes you can record everything on the pen. I've had one and really enjoy it.

Get this. A lesson plan using Kinect, teaching math, and aligned with common core standards. This includes handouts. For grades 3-6. If you have a kinect at your school, you'll want to follow kinecteducation.com

Siemens Stem applications due by February 9th. Here is the overview of how things will be this year. They will have a program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and also at the Pacific Northwest national Laboratory. 50 middle and high school educators are invited to apply. do you teach Science, Technology, Math, or Engineering. Apply.

I love this lesson plan which includes algebra, ratios, angles, and stastics that most 9th and 10th graders I know could compute. This could be a very fund summary activity. Look at this PDF and powerpoint and create your own. If you do, please share it with me in the comments or email it to me, I'd like to share what you do.

A website recognized by the Australian Education association and american Library association. As you look for activities to improve thinking - this website has puzzles, and activities that are bound to have you thinking and talking. There's also a kids corner. If you like game based learning, there are some great tools here. "A gym dedicated to the wellness of the mind."

Computer based math by David Wees from the K12 online conference. If you're missing the K12 online conference, you're missing something big. Here, David looks at the consequences of what would happen if Conrad Wolfram's vision of letting computers do math computations in order to free humans up to do other aspects of mathematical problem solving. Something math teachers will want to consider on this controversial topic.

Stacey Roshan writes about AP Calculus (which she flips, btw) but I think that this pondering on how she thinks classes should be redesigned to be online/ blended. I think her views are valuable because she's already flipping. Such views are very valuable and perhaps someone reading this will give her a chance to redesign Calculus or AP computer science in this way. Interesting post.

Examples of how wolfram alpha can be used in the classroom. From math to physics to research and economics, you can use this data crunching engine in very powerful ways. Another important tool for students and authentic researchers of all ages.

Tons of interactive white board resources - FREE ONES from @Tesconnect - I'm sending all of these to our kindergarten teachers. Lots of great free stuff. TES is in the UK so sometimes the terms are different but great resources.

Software companies claim "proven" results but continue to ignore independent studies. If you think you can get a quick fix with software you might want to look again. This New York Times article shows just how volatile this debate has become.

For those who knew @mathfaery - you may want to go to this blog and contribute to the fund in her memory. What a horrible Loss. Here are the details: "Elizabeth Hamman was a great math educator who will be truly missed in the International math community. She passed away very suddenly last week, at the age of 40, after suddenly developing a problem with blood clots in her lungs, which led to a bleed in her brain. Elizabeth started writing a blog last year, called Mathfaery: Making Math Magical and was known as @mathfaery on twitter."

Lots of research starting to come in that smartphones make great study helpers and curricular delivery tools. This from the Jacksonville daily news: "Onslow County students using smart phones in math courses not only outperformed their peers in math but also went on to take additional math courses. A Project K-Nect Evaluation Report, prepared by Project Tomorrow for Digital Millennial Consulting, noted that Onslow County Project K-Nect students — including students at Southwest and Dixon high schools — were more likely to achieve proficiency in algebra and algebra II than other students in their school district or state in the 2008-09 school year. Numbers for the 2009-10 school year will be released later this year."

Free math games on Sumdog!! These look like a lot of fun! Please share in the comments if you have an opinion! "The games are designed to help improve numeracy, especially between 9 and 13 years old, and are free to use either in school or at home. They cover 100 topics over 10 different levels, and let you play against others around the world."

Just announced the winners of this STEM initiative -- their project: "DV Technologies is a team of three high school students from Goleta, California. They put their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills to work outside of the classroom and designed a dashboard of the future to promote eco-friendly driving. "

The competition is a free, online math competition where students compete against one another in a quest to answer the most math questions in 24 hours. Last year, a new world record was set after a staggering 1,952,879 million students from 38,058 schools in 204 countries answered 452,681,681 math questions correctly during the World Math Day competition. Students are looking to break the record again this year. This is a REALLY cool event.

This from the Bubbabrain founder - a new Math challenge - go in and play for your state. From the founder: "I decided to create a national elementary math madness challenge. Students can score points for their state by playing math games. http://www.bubbabrain.com 1. Click on the math challenge link 2. Select your state 3. Select a game and hit submit 4. The top left card will say "find this" you have to click on the correct match 5. Clear the board and score points I teach 11th grade and was wondering how to get the message out to the elementary population. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!! Darren McCarty"

Fascinating cross-curricular project from Jennifer Tan's diigo bookmarks (she joined the educators group tonight.) Mathematics students determine whether Poe's story is mathematically sound using graphing calculators and computers.

This open source textbook by Raleigh, N.C., math teacher Kenny Felder was part of the review of the first 16 digital texts submitted to California's review program as part of the free open-source digital textbook initiative by California's Governor Schwarzenegger. This textbook scored a 96 and met 26 of 27 standards. Felder teaches at Raleigh Charter High school.

Just received the press release on this new one. $4.95 a month and you have access to videos to help with homework. There is a growing business based upon videos for learning -- that is because kids clamor for them. Textbooks, and teachers need to see the value in things like Eric Marco's Mathtrain.tv and other screencasting for teaching. Have the kids make their own tutorials for one another -- or you can just subscribe, I guess.

Congratulations to my friend Eric Marcos for being featured in the Harvard Graduate School of Education "Everyday Heroes" column. Eric's Mathtrain.tv project is amazing and an excellent use of digital storytelling in Math. He is a fellow Google Certified Teacher and I'm so proud of him! Way to go Eric!

Mathtrain.tv brought to you by Mr. Marcos and his 6th grade class in Santa Monica, CA. Let your students find answers about what they are doing here. This is amazing! This is an excellent example of WHY students should be creating and sharing with other students.

I think we're going to see more companies that have valid, standards based games like this one for elementary science and math. This isn't free but you can have a free trial and try the games free for 5 minutes. I think that games are going to be part of what we do and smart textbook companies would behoove themselves to embed games as part of the curriculum for each chapter. I wish my school could do something like this, another thing to look at.

This mathematicious video took a long time to make. I love it! Math teachers will love this. This is something for the horizon project student to review. This is Funny but it is an example of how videos can be made on any topic -- a math teacher could have students see how many of these terms they recognize.

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